rogdcam:I understand, and appreciate your thinking of Stamp Smarter as a possible repository for this publication. We are always looking for possible candidates where we can provide philatelic resources to the collecting community.
To All:I agree that there should be a better way to provide information about philatelic resources.
Don Denman and I had several conversations about this type of feature for Stamp Smarter before his death. We considered several possible approaches, but the logistics were never completely defined.
One of the interim approaches I developed was for the consolidation of information about a broad category of links to philatelic resources on the internet can be found on the Stamp Smarter Postal Portals page at the
USPOD Publications Library page.
https://stampsmarter.org/learning/Home_USPOD.html
https://stampsmarter.org/learning/P...lPortal.htmlFor many years, I had searched the internet to identify links to the many publications developed by the US Post Office Department and the successor US Postal Service. While many of these were hosted on Google Books and HathiTrust websites, their cataloging and title continuity was not consistent, and it was not easy to locate a specific publication for a specific date. When a publication was located, they were recorded in a series of Excel files. I eventually converted these into PDF files, each with the associate URL links and Don hosted them on Stamp Smarter.
The problem is not limited to just finding the appropriate resources and organizing them. One must also host them somewhere that makes them readily available to the philatelic community, and advertise that location so the stamp and postal history community can find where that compilation is published.
With such a large number of possible resources, they must be organized so that the user can find the topic or sub-topic of interest. The requirements are many.
Then it must be expanded and updated as new resources are identified.
The management of the information also requires constant checking to ensure that links are still correct or the original files have not been removed from the internet.
Unfortunately, this is not a "one-time-and-done" effort. It is an organic entity that must grow or die. One person cannot do it all, it takes a family.
Don and I never identified what we considered to be a fully suitable operational model for such an effort. We started one prototype project for Stamp Smarter, which was oriented towards United States stamps and postal history, but while we had that prototype defined, we never completed the proofing of the contents before our efforts were redirected to other projects.
This prototype can be viewed here.
https://stampsmarter.org/Learning/LinksPortal.htmlI
t is NOT linked to the Stamp Smarter website (that it, you cannot find this particular Portal within the Stamp Smarter Library structure). You can only access it through this link. It has errors, and little documentation. Most of the work was done 3-4 years ago, and so some URL are likely invalid as well. I was trying to both identify on-line digital resources, and also to document some of the physical resources like journals and published books within each geographic or topical category.
Our thinking was that this type of "Portal" could be maintained and managed like the other Stamp Smarter community projects. Volunteer contributors would be provided with account access to add new resources, or make corrections or additions to existing entries. These additions and updates would be monitored and reviewed by an administrator and vetted for appropriateness to the project.
Over time, our efforts here were replaced by newer projects, and it went dormant.
I would certainly welcome conversation with others here on SCF with thoughts about this type of resource.
MikeL
Stamp Smarter
Posted 01/19/2026 05:57 am
